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Forest Footprint to reward companies that saves trees |
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Monday, 29 June 2009 |
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 Andrew Mitchell finds inspiration in Mad Cow Disease – or, more accurately, in part of our response to it.
"We showed you could track a piece of beef from a farm in the country, through a slaughterhouse, to a butcher," he says. "It's not hard to do once people are properly motivated."
Mitchell, who heads the Global Canopy Programme, also chairs the steering committee for a new endeavor called the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project (FFDP). He hopes the FFDP will make it possible to label the deforestation impact of beef that comes from tropical areas – as well as for other "forest risk" commodities.
The FFDP takes a cue from the nearly ten-year-old Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which has built the world's largest database of corporate climate-change information by asking companies to come clean about their greenhouse gas emissions. The FFDP hopes to build a database of deforestation impacts by asking companies to come clean about where they get their raw materials, with the goal of identifying which companies have the most exposure to "deforestation risk" and which have the lowest.
To entice companies into participating, investors worth £1.3 trillion have signed a letter urging FTSE 100 companies to fill out the disclosure documents FFDP will be sending them between now and the middle of July.
"By demonstrating their sustainable business model, the intention is that they will attract more confidence and – eventually – more investment from the financial community," says project manager Steven Ripley.
The Benefits of Transparency
Companies will have until October to respond, and FFDP will announce the names of companies that are signed up to the project early next year. The goal is eventually to divide companies into three categories: those that are best in class, those that have adopted innovative policy and practice, and those that ignored the survey.
Abyd Karmali, who is Global Head of Carbon Markets for Bank of America Merrill Lynch and a member of the FFDP steering committee, believes the mere act of doing a forest carbon inventory will motivate some companies to reduce their forest carbon footprint.
"We've seen what sort of a transformation the CDP has been able to have on reporting of risks by listed companies," says Abyd Karmali, who is Global Head of Carbon Markets for Bank of America Merrill Lynch and a member of the FFDP steering committee. "It's also improved engagement with investors and raised awareness about what kind of climate risks and opportunities exist for companies going forward."
In some cases, he says, it's resulted in emission reductions that wouldn't have happened otherwise because companies realized they could slash emissions, win public support, and in some cases even cut costs.THE END
Source: Ecosystemmarketplace.com |
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